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Sathya Sai School

Polish bible

A woman born in Britain holds the only two possessions her Polish mother brought with
her when she arrived in this country shortly after the end of the Second World War. They are her Polish bible, and a photograph of her holding the bible on the farm in Germany to which she was deported to work during the War. She never returned to Poland. I like this picture as it is indicative of the few things that many migrants are able to carry with them on the often difficult journeys that they are forced into making: their culture and their memories.

Yeh Htoo Chit Love, photographer

I was part of the Karen opposition group in Burma. I had to escape from our village across the Thai/Burmese border but all the Karen men, over the age of 13 had to hide in the forest and fight the Burmese government. I thought I was going to die there. With the help of an English friend I escaped through Thailand to England.

I still feel like I’m a refugee here. One day I want to go back there. At the moment I dream of my home in Burma but there’s nowhere for me to go back to because I don’t have Burmese identity. I can’t go back legally and my house is not there anymore, it’s been turned into forest. When I fled the village I left everything in a box. I don’t even have a single photograph. I left everything behind. Now I have a family in the UK it feels like a home here but I still have that mentality of having your own homeland, your own culture, your own people, your own community around you.